[Denis MacDougall]: I think we're good to go. There's nobody else in the waiting room, so I think we can get started.
[Unidentified]: Okay, perfect. Dennis, could you kick us off by reading the introduction, please?
[Denis MacDougall]: Yes. So on July 1620 22 governor Baker signed into law an act relative to extending certain state emergency accommodations which among other things extends the expiration of the provisions pertaining to the open meeting law March 31st 2023. Specifically this extension allows public bodies to continue holding meetings remotely without a quorum of the public body physically present in a meeting location and to provide adequate alternative access to remote meetings. The act does not make any new changes to the open meeting law, other than extending the expiration date of the temporary provisions regarding remote meetings from July 15th, 2022 to March 31st, 2023.
[Unidentified]: Okay, thank you. And Dennis, could you call the case of the matter, please?
[Denis MacDougall]: Sorry, I had to use my other laptop for the projector.
[Unidentified]: Don't worry, just take your time.
[Denis MacDougall]: 4,000 mystic Valley Parkway case number 40 be dash 2022-o n one. The resumption of consideration of the petition of mvp mystic LLC and affiliate of Mill Creek residential trust LLC free comprehensive permit pursuant to Massachusetts general laws chapter 40 be for multifamily 8 story apartment development consisting of 2 buildings located in approximately 3 acres of land at 4,000 miss Valley Parkway property ID 7 dash o 2 dash 10. This proposal will be developed as an approximately 350 unit reach rental apartment building containing a mix of studio one 2, 3, bedroom apartments with 25% of the total units being designated as affordable housing to lower moderate income households.
[Unidentified]: Okay, thank you. Um, so for anyone listening or anyone watching. This is a little bit different than our typical meetings, this is a project that's come before us under mass general laws chapter 40 be we typically hear things under 40 a or. in that realm. So we aren't going to be using the same criteria that we normally would. So things might be a little bit different. We're going to do our best to try and explain things as we go along. We also, as board members, are new to this. So we're learning as well as we go. And we have Judy Barrett on here, who is a consultant. Hi, Judy. How are you doing? So we may be asking her some questions as we go. So I just ask that everyone bear with us, because we're all learning. OK. So to get started, why don't we hear first from the applicant, please?
[B3oaa8YVtBA_SPEAKER_16]: Thank you. For the record, Chris Rainier from Goulston and Storrs on behalf of Mill Creek.
[Unidentified]: Sorry, just one second. You're not popping up for me. I just want to. OK. Oh, there you go. Go ahead.
[B3oaa8YVtBA_SPEAKER_16]: You see me? I see myself.
[Unidentified]: I can see you now.
[B3oaa8YVtBA_SPEAKER_16]: Thanks. So Chris Rainier from Goulston and Storrs on behalf of Mill Creek, and thank you, Madam Chair and members of the board for having us this evening. What I thought I would do is give just a brief history of the project and project site, and then turn it over to Tim Alexander, who's going to go through a bit of a refresher of the project site, the prior project, and the current proposed project. I have with me this evening Luis Chianakis from my office, as well as Tim. We also have some other members of the team that Tim will introduce later. So as the board probably knows, Milcreek filed a comprehensive permit application for this site back in February 2020. There was some dispute at that time as to whether Medford had achieved the so-called GLAM, or General Land Area Minimum Safe Harbour. And during the pendency of that dispute, we tried to keep an open line of communication with the city about its comments and concerns with the project. And we were asked to make some revisions to the project, which we have incorporated and that Tim will review later this evening, which has allowed us to restart this local hearing process. I will say that we are very excited to be back at this point to recommence the hearing process and look forward to getting into the project. So with that, I'll turn it over to Tim, and we'd be happy to answer questions as we get into the presentation or at the end. I think it's thanks so much.
[MCM00001600_SPEAKER_05]: Great thank you Chris and I share your enthusiasm and thank you. Chairperson doherty and the rest of the board for for hosting this hearing evening. Dennis I have slides I'd like to share I think I need permission to do that.
[Alicia Hunt]: I just made you co-host.
[MCM00001600_SPEAKER_05]: Okay wonderful. Thank you I see it. So I will, bear with me one second.
[Unidentified]: Take your time.
[MCM00001600_SPEAKER_05]: Can you all see my screen now?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[MCM00001600_SPEAKER_05]: Great. So I just, here's an agenda. We will keep it rather brief, but given the passage of time and the time we've all put in on the project thus far, I wanted to provide a quick overview of both Mill Creek, our team, and the project as proposed, an overview of the project, as well as answer any initial questions that you, the board members, might have, and then thought it might be helpful to hear your initial thoughts, at least, on next steps as the hearing progresses. So I'll jump right in. The project team, . We have folks here online as well tonight from each of these key team members. Again, I am Tim Alexander from Mill Creek residential. We are the developer. I will get into a little bit more about us in a second. Our architectural team is called TAT. Andrew Stebbins from TAT is online tonight. Our civil engineer is H.W. Moore. And Tony Donato is a key associate from H.W. Moore. He's online tonight. Rob Adams from Halverson is our landscape architect, joins us as well. And our traffic engineer is Van Essen associates, Jeff Dirk is online as well. And they're here certainly tonight to answer questions that you may have. will be able to answer any questions that you may have. But also, in future hearings when we get a little more detail, they will be able to either present and or respond to questions from the board or other feedback. Chris, you already met from Goulston and stores. He and Louise are a key component of the project as We are a national company. We are focused on having a local team of expertise. One of the key attributes of Mill Creek is that we've also got our own general contracting firm. We have our own operations and management team as well. So we take pride in offering all three legs of the stool from the sort of development where we are right now, you know, pre-construction through the process into the construction of a community and obviously the lease up management and ongoing operation of the property. Couple stats there you can see, but more mostly what I think is important is again the three legs of the stool, but also the fact that we've developed and currently own and operate a community in Medford just down the street, which is on Cabot Road, 5 Cabot. And just a brief word on that. If you haven't been over, we're happy to host if you'd like to have a visit of the site and the community there. Madera Medford, as I mentioned, was actually permitted Through the ZBA, through the 40A process you mentioned, in 2014-15 range, it was constructed and delivered in 2018. It's just under 300 apartment homes, so it's been operating for just about five years now. And, you know, our residents there continue to be really, you know, really pleased to be members of the Medford community, be, you know, walkable to Wellington, to be a great relationship for us and the city. Transitioning now both the site and the context and our involvement over the past few years. So this is an area map that we like to use because it shows really all the great attributes of 4,000 Mystic Valley Parkway. We were lucky enough to become involved with this site and the property, as I mentioned, a little over three years ago now. And on the heels of Madera Medford, which you can see here on the right of the screen, When we learned of the opportunity at 4000 Mystic Valley Parkway, we looked at it and said, you know, it really takes a lot of the attributes we love from Cabot Road and amplifies them. Certainly the proximity to transit to Wellington, access to greater Boston. But then, you know, as you can see, really great vehicular access as well, whether it be on Route 16 on the parkway itself or Proximity to route 28 or and or route 93. And then the walkable piece is something that we think is really unique here. Obviously walk ability to nearby commercial retail restaurant, whether it be metal Glenn and the Wegmans, or, you know, Fellsway Plaza. just to the northeast and beyond. I'll talk about McDonald Park again in a second, but just to give you the brief context, obviously, I'm sure you've driven by or are familiar with the site. Just a quick word on what's there today. So 4,000 Mystic Valley Parkway for a long period of time was an industrial slash commercial use building built in the late 50s, a single story building that most recently housed a group of commercial and retail tenants, a gym, furniture store, et cetera. As you would imagine, a single-story building of that size takes up the majority of the site, and then the remainder of the site is a parking area, more or less. Just a view, one more view of the site, and you can see some of the shots of the building. Actually, today, The building is vacant as the tenants have moved out over the course of the past couple of years. One more image of the site before we dive into the specifics of the proposal. And we, you know, this is one that I'm particularly fond of because it shows obviously one of the really unique attributes of this location and that's McDonald Park to just directly across from Mystic Valley Parkway. and 63 acres of improvements and trails. And I know all the effort and work that's gone into sort of creating more amenitization of this park over the past few years, including the landing that you could see to the south and boat launch, et cetera. And we've heard and sort of witnessed how this is in a lot of ways an untapped resource. for the city and the community and the region. And we'll get into it a little bit more about how we are hoping we can help, you know, provide a bit more access, you know, not only for residents of our specific Moderna Mystic community at this site at 4000 Mystic Valley Parkway, but also the surrounding neighbors and visitors. So, This is really getting into, if you will, the meat and potatoes, right, of the proposal as it is today and as it was two or three years ago. So on the left, you can see the original submission to the board, which was made in early 2020. It consisted of a single building, a podium building, if you will, which is, you know, parking on the first couple of levels and then residential above, not dissimilar to many of the other multifamily communities that are in or around this neighborhood. It was 380 apartment homes as proposed, as I mentioned, a single building and was 100% residential and did not have a commercial component. Chris mentioned our sort of ongoing dialogue with the city that, you know, over the course of the past nine to 12 months has, you know, really resulted in what we see on the right of the screen, which is the current proposal. So as Chris mentioned, we wanted to be, we kept engaging, we wanted to be good listeners, and we're able to find a set of really, you know, seemingly straightforward, but really impactful improvements and revisions to the project that have resulted in, you know, obviously this hearing process starting tonight. So you can see on the right now, the proposal consists of 350 homes, so a 30 unit reduction as compared to the original. Clearly, the building has been broken into two from one single structure. This was done with a really keen eye towards, you know, providing light and air between the buildings, creating a sense that this wasn't one big superblock, but was a, you know, a series of smaller buildings, if you will, that fit into the fabric of the neighborhood a bit better. And lastly, we've added a component on the ground floor of retail. that we feel will really help to add to the fabric of what Mystic Valley Parkway corridor is starting to become and will become. So you can see just a couple of those benefits or the changes was clearly a decrease. Building footprint and lock coverage, which means increased open space. We want to do everything we can to provide for what we call pervious area on the site right area that's either green or or landscape. And then you know obviously that other piece that comes with that we reduction in size and density is reduce vehicle trips and parking as well. A couple more. A couple more details that I want to walk through and this is just a little bit of breakdown in numbers for the proposal, as I mentioned, 350 apartment homes. Under Chapter 40B, as I know you've heard and learned from Judy Barrett, 25% of those homes are set aside for affordable housing at 80% AMI. So that's obviously a key portion of the 40B program. A couple nuances there that I wanted to just mention. While 25% of the homes are affordable, and you may already know this, the full 350 homes as constructed and approved would be counted towards the subsidized housing inventory for the city of Medford, which I know is, you know, which is oftentimes an important piece. The other thing to mention on the affordability is that if the city were to choose, and I think Judy may have mentioned this too in her session a couple months ago, something called local preference can be instituted, which would allow for the majority, I believe it's 75% of the affordable homes to be set aside or used for local Medford residents, something that is available to the board. So a couple of the things just on the project, I know you've got the stats in the submission, but just over 400 parking spaces are provided, certainly providing parking for all of our residents on site. We, this is not a number that was arrived at, you know, with, you know, cavalierly. We actually studied pretty closely the actual parking usage at Madera Medford on Cabot Road. and have applied some of those learnings and lessons to the amount of parking for this proposal. And just briefly, obviously, similar if you visited any of the other communities in the area, including Madera Medford or some of the other nearby communities, similar suite of onsite both management to make sure that the community is professionally managed day and night, but also resident amenities for our future residents. A couple quick things I'll get into just on sort of design, architecture, a little bit on civil engineering and transportation, and then I'll turn it back over. So this is just a conceptual rendering of the project that was submitted as part of the package. It really gives a general look and feel of our proposal and of the design. This is a view from really the corner of Mystic Valley Parkway and Commercial Street that's looking to the northeast. Wanted to provide this so you can get a sense of the mix of materials that are used. So, you know, not to get into too great a detail, we're happy to do this later or at a future hearing, but you can see a mix of masonry at the lower levels. siding or cementitious siding that's used above in a series of forms and colors. And obviously, you know, you can see a patterning of windows that is regular. So it works for the apartment homes, but also is broken up. So it has some design aesthetic and uniqueness as well. And, you know, TAT is a firm that we've worked with in greater Boston for We have been working on this for a long time. The entirety of Mill Creek's existence 10-12 years now. We have been refining this. As we split the building from one to two, we have applied a few different lessons to break down the scale and form of the building as well. A couple of quick floor plan within the building footprint and how it's generally surrounded by residential homes. So you can see the parking as it stripes. Anything here that's on the outside with a letter or is obviously labeled as leasing or amenity or retail is then a residential or commercial use. And this shows very clearly how the majority of access for the site will come off of this in and out and two-way entrance and exit off of Commercial Street. A goal of pulling traffic off of Mystic Valley Parkway. The other thing I wanted to show is you can see the footprint of the retail here done in this exact location for a couple of reasons. One is we want it to be able to communicate with the sites to the east, specifically the courthouse, And beyond, we know there are, you know, redevelopment plans further down the parkway and may as well be to our west in the future. But this is a location for the retail use that allows it to be accessible either via, and I can go back. Sorry, one second. I'll show you in a second how this can be accessible either to, you know, to vehicles or pedestrians or bikers or what have you. The second view is a traditional residential level for the project for our community. You can see how each of these rectangles or shapes has a different letter attached to it. That's denoting an A would be a one-bedroom, B would be a two-bedroom, a C would be a three-bedroom, really wanted to show this to show a mix of home types and sizes that are mixed throughout the floors and throughout the building. And also should note here that the affordable homes, you know, the 25% or 88 units within the community are also commingled with the quote unquote market rate units around the floor plates of the buildings as well. final view sort of from an architectural perspective is just the sections. And I know, again, this is just a quick overview, not to go into too great detail, but we wanted to show how, A, the parking lays out, and then how it is more or less surrounded or built on by the residential square footage as well. And just one note on this is that the first three levels of the community would be then this gets a little bit in the weeds, but will be built out of what's called type one or non-combustible concrete construction, concrete or steel. And then the levels above are wood frames. So very similar to, A, what we did in Medford, Modera Medford, B, what you've seen at other recent projects. So constructability, construction type is very similar to what's been done nearby. This is a conceptual landscape plan that we wanted to share, and I know this didn't make it into our submission package. We're happy to supplement and include this with a little bit more so you can see a little bit more detail on how we see landscape playing out. The couple things I wanted to focus on here was certainly the, you know, what we're trying to do is increase and maximize as much as I said, green space and permeability as we can. There are a couple things that we need to do. One is obviously provide emergency vehicle access that meets code and meets the needs of the local officials. So we actually worked hard over the summer and coordinated with the fire chief and others to make sure that this plan provided adequate access, and we're glad that it does. You can see then just how landscape can come in around that potential for walking paths, provide connectivity both within our site and potentially to the site to the east, to the courthouse site. And you can see initial concepts for courtyards within our community. That would be, you know, A, an active sort of pool courtyard, and then a passive, more relaxing courtyard use. for folks to use within the community. The last thing, and maybe most important, I wanted to point out is our pocket park here on the corner of Mystic Valley Parkway and Commercial Street. This is getting back to the idea of access to McDonald Park. This is something that we felt strongly about even years ago that we provide, A, a sort of area of rest and respite for those who are on the north side. of Mystic Valley Parkway, whether they're coming from the west towards Wellington or back out on their way home, but also sort of creates an anchor, if you will, as we hope to provide good north to south access from points north down into McDonald Park. So that's an area that we've delineated and worked through and sort of carved the building back, if you will, to provide for that pocket park. Just a couple more things. One is just an overview on site and civil engineering. I didn't mention it up front, but another key attribute of this site is obviously existing infrastructure. So existing infrastructure in both certain terms of road network, but also utilities, you know, underground, both wet and dry utility access. And so our, plan and proposal obviously takes advantage of that, of the proximity and the existing infrastructure. We know water and sewer connections, we've got a plan for all of that. More importantly, or as importantly, a plan for stormwater management on site to make sure, you know, we actually are improving and by, you know, increasing the pervious area on site. So a reduction of, you know, just straight asphalt, if you will, that doesn't allow water to permeate. And so, you know, again, down the road as we get into it, Tony Donato from HW Moore and team can get further into the details on the stormwater calcs and the plans. But wanted to just mention an overview of why, you know, why the site and the design that we've proposed are sort of meeting or exceeding the regulations. I mentioned quickly traffic, transportation, you know, vehicular infrastructure. We know that Mystic Valley Parkway is already a well-traveled roadway. We see that as, you know, as obviously a good thing. It gets us to and from the community, to and from Wellington, to and from Points West. And so we've worked hard to, you know, A, you know, put our parking number at an appropriate number, but also make sure that we're getting vehicles on and off of the site in an expeditious way. You can see how we're showing the blue arrows is really the ins and outs of the site. We certainly, with Van Ness' help, through their work, produced a traffic impact analysis that was submitted as part of this submission. Another thing that I wanted to mention that we've actually employed successfully at Madera-Medford is a resident shuttle that gets our residents to and from Wellington Station. Obviously the key times during during during rush hour in the morning the evening. It's actually only a half mile. You know so could be a 10 or 15 minute walk or even quicker bike for folks to get to Wellington. But we also recognize that every day is 70 and sunny. And so we want to provide folks the opportunity to quickly get over to Wellington and so we have we have committed to providing a shuttle for our residents to move them back and forth to Wellington station. So with that, I've already went a little longer than I planned, so I appreciate your patience. Wanted to just quickly summarize, you know, obviously Mill Creek, we're known to and with the city. We're really appreciated the recent partnership, but also the long-term relationship we've had with the city through Madera Medford. We are thrilled to be at this point and to be working on a site that we believe has so many great, great attributes and know that there's a need and a large need for housing in the city, obviously in greater Boston. And we feel like this is a very appropriate site for that housing creation. So want to hand it back to the board and, you know, obviously understanding that there are next steps we'll hear feedback from the board specifically. I know city staff and different departments within the city will have their review and potential comments and would love to hear if you have thoughts or have a discussion on what potential next steps or sort of cadence of the next hearings would be. We're happy to discuss and coordinate on that as well. So thanks again.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[MCM00001600_SPEAKER_05]: I can sorry just I can keep the slides up or I can take them back down whatever you whatever is helpful.
[Unidentified]: um. Why don't you take them down for now. Okay. Okay um so I actually just wanted to check in with Judy. Do you have any suggestions for us in terms of how we sort of structure stuff? I know we really want to make sure that we're cognizant of 180 days seems like a lot of time, but it seems like it ends up not being. So I just wanted to check in with you before we kind of do anything. I think one of the main things we want to get done today is get some future meetings scheduled. What are your thoughts?
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: I agree with you, and I think it would be also very helpful to the board and the applicant and other interested parties, if those scheduled meetings, perhaps focused on a particular topic. So people can anticipate what's coming. It's not common in a 40 be hearing process to devote a night to traffic or to stormwater or, you know, to whatever sort of the driving concerns are but the particular project design, you know, I think it really comes down to what questions does the board have. because ultimately you're the ones who have to make a decision. And what do you think you really are gonna need a deeper dive on beyond what the applicant has sort of gone over in a summary way tonight? So I think this is the point when you guys get to ask your questions of the applicant, which may also mean that some of the applicants, expert consultants will be responding to some of those questions as well. I don't know whether they'll need to, but I think this is your chance to ask questions before you open this up for public comment.
[Unidentified]: Okay, great. Board members, what do we think? Anyone have any questions they want to ask the applicant before we get going?
[Andre Leroux]: Hi, Jackie, this is Andre. I do have quite a few questions, but I think it would be really helpful for us to hear from the city first, maybe Alicia, in terms of what the city review process has been like so far and to what extent the departments have have already seen some of this and weighed in on it.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, great idea. Alicia.
[Alicia Hunt]: Hi, Madam Chair. I am actually going to turn my video on there, but you're hearing me through the council chambers. It's a little disconcerting. So our process is that this was just received. We had 30 days to open the public hearing. We have let the public know that this is available, but we anticipate that this board will now request peer reviews and that our city staff should weigh in and what they would like to see in the peer reviews. and that they then also respond to the peer reviews. So they have not had additional presentations on this other than what they might be seeing this evening, and we have not asked them to provide us feedback unless they had a burning desire to. So we're waiting on the peer reviews, which maybe Judy could comment on that.
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: Sure. So again, I think it really comes down to what does the board feel that it needs help reviewing that perhaps city staff. can't address in some way. I mean, I'll just give you an example, Alicia, it's not uncommon in one of these projects to perhaps have design review and you don't have an architect on staff, so you bring somebody in from outside. Sometimes it's helpful to the board to just get an outside perspective on parking, on traffic or whatever, but I think it really comes down to what does the board feel they need information on sufficient to make a decision about the project. And I'm not saying staff shouldn't weigh in on that, but I really think it comes down to what does the board need to know? So the typical peer review in a project like this would be traffic, would be engineering, probably stormwater, would be, and when I say traffic, I mean both vehicular and pedestrian safety, and then design. Those are the ones I tend to see.
[Unidentified]: Yeah. So Judy, on that front, it's sort of one of those things I'm not sure necessarily what we're going to need until we're in it, just because none of us have gone through this process before. I don't want to speak for all the other board members. The ones that you've said, I know you mentioned that at our training as well, design, stormwater, traffic, engineering, they sound like the correct ones to be asking. I would be happy to defer to your judgment on that, unless I suppose we hear back from some of the city departments saying there's something else that they'd like us to address as well.
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I agree with that. I think if the city to city staff can identify something that they think needs further review that they don't have the in house capacity to do. I think that's essentially a request to the board to secure peer review services to review that and I don't know where the staff is on that, but I'm sure Alicia knows but I don't.
[Unidentified]: So, Andre did you have something there.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, Madam Chair, if I might suggest that we see what questions board members have tonight, so that we can organize our concerns and where we need to get information and then we could maybe revisit this question of process back towards the end to see if there are certain things we want to focus on and whether there's some some peer review that we that we need. I do think that I have a lot of questions. I was on the Community Development Board that reviewed the Moderna Medford project in terms of its site plan review and the recommendations on that one. I may be a little bit more used to that site plan review process than the ZBA. other ZBA members might be. So there are a lot of different issues that we could get into here. And it'd be maybe, it'd be great to hear from all the board members, the other board members, what they think, you know, of what we've seen so far.
[Unidentified]: Okay, that sounds good. Do you want to kick us off? Sure.
[Andre Leroux]: I'm wondering if Well just a couple of informational things. Dennis could we get the project eligibility letter some point I don't think that was part of the materials. And I'm sorry if I missed it.
[Denis MacDougall]: Yeah we can get that you I think it might have been in the original original file package so I'll go through that and sort of make sure that you can okay great.
[Andre Leroux]: Thank you. I'm On design issues, one of my principal concerns is, and I really appreciate seeing all the balconies and open space. I appreciate the fact that rather than be one huge building, it's now two buildings. But I'm still, I am concerned about the interior courtyards in particular, and that know I counted up 113 units so basically about a third of all the units only have exterior like natural light access via the internal courtyard and that concerns me a lot because I'm just not certain that those are going to be great units to to live in in terms of what the light might be. The ones on the eighth floor probably be a lot better than the ones on the fourth floor. So I'd love to see some independent architectural review of that, whether there might be any suggestions. I know that these buildings are twice as big about as the other Moderna project. So it's a very different scale. And I think interior courtyards can work well for like a three, maybe four-story building above that. I think you're talking like hotel atrium feel on the inside. And if that's the only area where you're getting your natural light, I just would like a professional opinion to look at that, to make sure that these are units that are good to live in for everybody. I would also love to see what the, You know, the target rent levels are and how the affordable units. And I'm sorry if I missed this, but I'm not, I didn't see a table that said like the, you know, bedroom unit breakdown and the affordability. I'd like to see that. I'd like to see what the target rent levels are at 80% AMI and what the market rate ones would be. I think it would be beneficial in addition to the departments to review this, to also have the community development board take a look at it just to get feedback from them. I know they don't have a formal review role in this process, but those are all residents with design and development backgrounds that I think could provide a lot of helpful feedback to us and to the proponent. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. I also noticed that there's a lot of, you know, compact car spaces, and I'd like to see an updated parking kind of analysis I think in what I saw. It said that there was, you know, the existing parking requirements were to parking spaces per unit but that's changed with our new zoning. This year, so I'd like to see kind of an updated analysis of what are the actual parking requirements are now. And also in our new zoning, there's a number of kind of design guideline features in the zoning that I'd like to have addressed by the proponent as well. And those things, you know, that range from electric vehicle, charging infrastructure, to bike parking, to materials and layout and things like that. So throwing a lot at you, I know.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, just on that point, I noticed in one of the filings related to the sections of the bylaws, section four, the requested waivers, it cites to all of the, I think it's citing to all of the code from our prior ordinance. So I didn't know if you folks had received copies of the updated ordinance.
[B3oaa8YVtBA_SPEAKER_16]: If I could, Madam Chair, I'll speak to that. PB, Lupita D Montoya PB – She, Her, Hers. PB, Lupita D Montoya PB – She, Her, Hers.
[Unidentified]: PB, Lupita D Montoya PB – She, Her, Hers.
[B3oaa8YVtBA_SPEAKER_16]: PB, Lupita D Montoya PB – She, Her, Hers. As we go through this, we can provide an updated waiver list, but that was the reason for that. We do have a new ordinance, but we're told that there were just some scrivener's errors that are being cleaned up.
[Unidentified]: I don't know that I'm familiar with that. Victor or Alicia, do you know the status on that?
[Alicia Hunt]: Actually, Bill, do you want to speak to that one?
[Unidentified]: Oh, sorry, Billy, your hand. Yep. Good call, Bill.
[Bill Forte]: That's okay. It took me a minute to find the hand raising the handrail. Okay. Hello, folks.
[Unidentified]: This is Bill 40. He is our new building commissioner.
[Bill Forte]: Yes. Hi, folks. For the record, William 40 building commissioner for the city. So I did look into this today. We do currently we have adopted Draft 10 as as our zoning or current zoning ordinance which is adopted by city council on March 10 of 2022 Okay, that is the current ordinance, regardless of whether or not there are any scriveners errors in there. It would be. We would have to go by that ordinance because that's the one that has been adopted. I don't believe that any sections of Chapter 94 are in effect. I did speak with the city clerk today and asked him to remove Section 94 from the general ordinances. Again, it is not recodified. In our general ordinances, as the zoning ordinance, as of yet, I do have a working session scheduled with with city council along with director. Alicia and and Vic and we're going to um hammer out some of the last details. I did also speak today with um with Mark Bobrowski and um on Mark's end he believes that he he is complete and that he had no more changes to make. Um so we're still in the middle of working that out but I would I would recommend that um that uh you uh provide a revised um list of um uh sections of relief if you will, from draft 10, because that's what I'm following right now. And as far as I'm concerned, that is the zoning ordinance as it stands, even if it's not codified in our general ordinances. So I hope that answers your question.
[Unidentified]: It does. Thank you so much. That's perfect.
[Bill Forte]: Thank you.
[Unidentified]: Okay. Andre, did you have anything else I cut you off?
[Andre Leroux]: I have some smaller questions, but I think those are the big ones. I'll leave it there for right now.
[Vasudevan]: Okay. Uh, board members, anyone else have some questions, Jim?
[Unidentified]: Oh, you're on mute. Yes. Uh, could we add to that list? The outdoor lighting with the outdoor lighting around the premises would be like, yeah. I mean, you can make any requests at this point in terms of questions that you like. That's the only thing I'd like to add to that existing, you know, list that Andre just gave. OK, Mike.
[Mike Caldera]: Yeah, so so. My thoughts are as follows, I don't have any specific questions right now, but so. As a board, we're supposed to be trying to understand and balance local needs and concerns with the regional need for affordable housing as part of this evaluation process. And these are very complex projects. And so I'm of the opinion that really we should be systematically going through all of the core areas that are part of that analysis so that there's an opportunity for the proponent to provide detailed presentations in these areas for us to ask more specific questions and also so that we can lay out a roadmap for the public and city staff about what's going to be discussed when, so it can be a little bit more organized. You don't have to sort of like just guess which one to show up for. There's a meeting with a devoted topic, or if you have a question on that topic, you could come to that. I think it's important for us to get city departments weighing in. It's important for us to get the public weighing in. I think it's important for us to have work sessions planned just in case topics come up in some of these detailed views that would benefit some back and forth with the proponent. And so, yeah, really for me, I would like to see us do a deep dive into health, health safety, environmental design. open space and planning. And I certainly want you to leave all these discussions. I don't, I think you would probably live in the planning section, but just with an understanding of, you know, some of the questions Andre was asking with respect to, you know, what is affordable? What does the market rate look like? What were some of the decisions that sort of went into that? And also, I'd also just like to understand this local preference, kind of how that's, I know a lot of that's, there's sort of procedures in place for that, but I'd like the public to have an understanding of what that looks like. So yeah, from my perspective, again, I'll reiterate, You know, I think there could be a meeting on health, there could be a meeting on safety, environmental, design, open space, planning. Those are like the core areas that would give, and I'd want peer reviews on all those, I'd want city departments to weigh in on all those, I'd want working sessions planned. If some of these things end up being quick discussions, great, but I think that If at the outset, because this group attending this meeting, even with the public, public that's in the know probably understands that there will be follow-up meetings. So I don't feel like we're at a state of information right now, even though the board all has questions to really rule out those talks. And then learn a presentation. Everybody's good. Everybody understands. and move on, I think we should plan to have a placeholder for all these topics because it's going to be hard for us to anticipate where the public questions are going to be, where the city staff concerns are going to pop up, where the peer review concerns are going to pop up, where we're going to need that time to discuss in a work session. So yeah, that's my opinion. I'm happy to discuss if folks disagree, but I really would like for this to be comprehensive. I mean, it's supposed to be a comprehensive permit process, and I think that's one way that we could achieve that.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, thank you. That's an interesting perspective. I think So my first thought on that, I had been imagining that we would have meetings after our training based on the categories that Judy had mentioned and that within each of those categories, we could address those factors. I hadn't considered sort of reversing that. I think my concern would be if we structure it around something like health, that kind of could touch on like every sort of expertise area. And so instead of, like if we have one that's on traffic, then we could ask the health environment, design, all of those questions that relate to traffic maybe. But if we have health, then we need to have health and present sort of on traffic and stormwater and engineering. Does that make sense? I guess I'm just thinking, what makes sense to be like the big umbrella and then the little umbrella?
[Mike Caldera]: Yeah, that's a fair call out. So I have a much less strong opinion about how we logically divide things. I think it's really important that we're able to ultimately understand and speak to these, what is it, six areas. But I'm certainly happy to adopt a strategy where if there are some typical areas that, or typical ways of dividing things that will help us get to an understanding on those areas, I'm amenable. main takeaway is, while I have some questions, it would be my preference not to just like provide a laundry list today, you know, I don't have any questions that are going to be so unexpected that I think, you know, withholding them would somehow, you know, hurt the proponent or anything like that, you know, they're going to be very much so in the wheelhouse of these core areas. But the presentation that was given today was by design very high level. Of course, the documents we have are lower level, and so we've had an opportunity to review those. But yeah, I just want to be very systematic, touch on all the areas, even if we, perhaps as a board, don't have as many questions in a particular area, because it's going to be really hard to anticipate where the public's gonna have questions, where the city staff is gonna have suggestions. So yeah, please don't interpret my comment as a strong preference about logically dividing it in this manner, as long as we're being thorough. I wanna have all the areas covered just for completeness so that the public has visibility and can weigh in so that we're getting all the feedback we need for our analysis.
[Unidentified]: Yeah. And no, no, I think, you know, we're all new to this. So we're just kind of figuring it out. Um, I would be, I think it's probably a good idea to make sure that we are, you know, sort of like our best practices could be something where we make sure that at each of these subject matter, um, meetings, we're just making sure we're that every single one we're saying, okay, we're addressing those subtopics and we just make sure we sort of go down a list so that we don't miss anything on that front. That might be a good way to do it. Andre, did you want to add something? Oh, sorry, Mike. Was there something else?
[Andre Leroux]: I was just agreeing with you.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, OK. Andre?
[Andre Leroux]: I just want to. I think the suggestion Mike of being systematic is is a good one. I, my counter suggestion or additional suggestion would be to not jump into those thematic meetings too soon. You don't want to get into the weeds on trash collection if the design is going to change in a significant way. And so I would like first to collect all this information and get feedback about what we have in front of us from the departments and maybe from the community development board. And get some of the information that you know I and others want to see, and maybe kind of have a meeting where we review all of that stuff perhaps in early January. And then we can see where we're at. In my experience, when I was chairing the Community Development Board and we were doing site plan reviews, is we would cover all of these issues for a project in a meeting. And sometimes they would be long meetings, and sometimes we would have to continue them. And maybe we don't want to do it exactly like that, but I think we could cover a lot of ground in each meeting. I would suggest clustering them so that maybe you're tackling We have a list of the order we're going to go in. We're going to do transportation, parking, environment, health, whatever it is, and then we'll see in our meeting how many of them we can cover. Or we say we're going to do three of them in one meeting and three in another. I don't think we need a separate meeting for every single one of those issue areas.
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: You also don't really need a peer review for every one of those statutory local concerns. I just want to jump in on this. Yeah, yeah, go ahead, Judy. The board is not obligated to make a finding of fact on every local concern in the statute. The local concerns are there to sort of define the bounds of the board's jurisdiction. But I'll just take planning as an example. If nobody has a question that there's any sort of planning inconsistency or problem with planning, it's not an issue and it doesn't need to be part of the board's deliberations. If planning is a big concern, then that's a different matter. But it really is, that's the sort of topic where the city staff would be in the best position to sort of lead the discussion around about the city's planning objectives and how the project may or may not fit those. You don't need a peer review consultant for that. And, you know, it's pretty typical for a board to look at the things that sort of matter the most significantly in terms of the quality of life for people who are going to live in a development, public health, public safety, environmental impact, and transportation or traffic as part of that. Those tend to be kind of big issues with these bigger projects. But things like planning or open space, not necessarily. If the project satisfies the board's desires, then that's done. And now you focus on the things that are the issues that really are disturbing to the board. You guys get to decide what the agenda is. And I think that the best thing you can do is really get your heads into what you've got, give the city staff a chance to sort of produce their various reports. And at your next meeting, I think, and the community development board too, Andre, I don't know how Medford's organized as well as you do, but whoever kind of normally would be involved in reviewing an application and making recommendations or providing comments to the CBA should do that. And then the board can decide, well, what are the questions that we have that are not answered by these existing reports? And it may be a big long list or it may be a few, you just don't know yet.
[Unidentified]: Okay, that's helpful. Do you think in that regard that perhaps our next meeting should be a general meeting, where we take a look at the feedback we get from the city and then subsequent meetings could maybe be the themed ones in terms of Traffic stormwater design, etc.
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: I think that's an excellent idea and I wouldn't take it beyond the next meeting in terms of the board deciding where you think you may need peer review, because as you so astutely pointed out 180 days is not that long. So you don't want to wait too long to decide if you need peer review help. I don't know the project or the situation as well as you guys do, but I'll just throw this out. If you know you're going to need a traffic review or transportation review, you might as well get that peer review going. That's just a given. It's just such an issue on every one of these projects. And maybe you decide now, yeah, we need a transportation review. And maybe at the next meeting you say, and these are the other three things that we need, whatever. But I wouldn't push it beyond that. And then I'd be very disciplined about what is it that you need that you can't get internally from your own staff. You're fortunate to have city departments that are well-resourced just in terms of talent. So it's never that you need a consultant for every item. And it's never that you need to touch every local concern in the statute. You focus on the ones that are relevant to the project in front of you. OK, that's very helpful. Thank you, Bill.
[Bill Forte]: Thank you madam chair. So I've had quite a bit of experience. This would probably be I I felt to right over 3.40 be orders of over 250 units apiece my former position in the city of Waltham and so I have a great deal of experience with all these types of projects and so on what I would suggest right right from what I have seen from the introductory package. Yeah, I would suggest that the petitioner file right away with with the board. Technical diagrams on Zoning open space. So a complete zoning plan and package laying out the parking by numbers. I know they do have a zoning analysis chart on there that's very helpful. But I think what we what we need as far as department heads going only speak for myself, but I'm sure that all other department heads would follow suit is at minimum we're going to need technical diagrams I I guess my question. Well the petitioner would be this is How far along percentage wise of the drawings. Are you at what level of percentage because obviously you know we would have to have drawings on you know some big detail on the site engineering the subsurface drainage. Obviously you know we would want to see all the calculated setbacks I'd like to see how you're calculating your average grade plane in accordance with the state building code because this building substantially pushes the limits of the state building code. In fact, I challenged this very design in Waltham and I was overturned by the Building Code Appeals Board. I'm not inclined to deny that same design here, but obviously, I've got some concerns about the limits that this particular design pushes to. But we would want to see a little bit, at least for me, A project of this size should should include anywhere from, you know, probably 28 to 40 pages of technical diagrams including planting schedules, you know, building heights, you know, you have a pretty good layout there of you know of of your elevation so we'd want to see in bigger detail to scale a set of plans that would provide us with that information along with an affordable unit layout you know what your affordable unit layout is going to be in color so that we can you know see how those units have been chosen. In addition to that I think I would want to see the number of type one and two units under the accessibility code so that we can have this all kind of ironed out so when the order is you know if if and when the order is granted on that we have a set of all plans that we can cite as the controlling plans for the project. So again the 10 or 12 pages that I saw on the submittal. I would I would consider largely you know incomplete or insubstantial to be able to make a determination so would you agree with that. I'm asking that to the petitioner for you that it.
[Unidentified]: Oh, sure. The petitioner can definitely answer that bill I do I just was thinking it might be helpful I I started writing down all the things that you were saying, but some of it is a little outside of my expertise. No, no, no, this is super helpful. Um, is that something that you could just put in writing? I'm just thinking it might be helpful if you put that in either a letter or something, so we can make it part of the public record that you're saying this, these would be the helpful things we'd like to review. And then we don't have any questions. The petitioner knows exactly what you're asking for. And then they can let us know and say, yes, we can provide this or no, we can't something to that effect. Yeah. To the petitioner. Does that, does that sound good to you?
[MCM00001600_SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it does. Yeah. I was just going to suggest. something similar, so thank you, Madam Chair. To answer in a little bit more, just a slight bit more detail, a lot of the things you mentioned, we either have started or have completed, so for instance, obviously building height is very important, right, as you mentioned, to make sure we stay below the maximum, so that's something we've studied closely to make sure we are compliant. We're happy to share more about that. There are other areas, just given the stage where we are right now, that we haven't completed, for instance, a layout of where all the affordable units will be. But if that's something that the board desires, that's obviously something we can work to be responsive to.
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: Can I ask a question, though? Because are you planning to have the units float? are you going to have fixed affordable units, or are they going to float? In other words, if someone, you know what I'm asking, if someone's income goes up, they don't necessarily get bounced out, but the next unit that becomes vacant, that's market rate becomes affordable. So you never kind of fall out of the 25% world. That's pretty standard, and I'm assuming that's what you're going to do. So I don't know what merit there is in identifying where the affordable units are, because they're probably gonna change.
[Bill Forte]: Madam Chair, if I may.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, go ahead.
[Bill Forte]: My understanding is that the DCHD must approve that that plan and that becomes a deed restriction. So I'm not exactly sure I understand what Judy's saying. I don't believe those units are ever interchangeable.
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yes, they are in a rental development. Absolutely. And it's very common.
[Bill Forte]: All right. Fair enough.
[Mike Caldera]: Yeah, so I just wanted to speak to Andre's suggestion and Miss Barrett's suggestion. So I think it's a great idea before we get too deep into the weeds with the predefined subtopics to have some meetings scheduled where departments have had a chance to weigh in. We've had a chance to the review or review those reports and so on, where we aren't yet in the sub-theme. I like that idea. To Ms. Barrett's point, I got the impression, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong here, but that requesting a peer review is not questioning the, the talent of the relevant department chair, but it's actually providing a valuable resource to them. So my position, you could think of it as like a second opinion or an additional thing for them to consider. So I think it's just due diligence. So I would be in favor of identifying today, if possible, the sub areas that we eventually want to discuss. I think that anything we're asking a city department to weigh in on, we should offer a peer review to them, so we should request one unless they tell us they don't need one. And I would also, while I think that it's probably prudent to avoid deciding today the theme and even going theme by theme as Andre suggested. I'm not personally in favor of the idea of having sort of like a floating agenda where we get as far as we get and then we continue it. So I'd like to ideally today schedule all of the meetings we think we need, possibly without the topics of those meetings, identified. So basically we have a full schedule. We have dates identified for all of the hearings we think we need. Then after those initial follow-ups where we're still not at the subtopic level, when we have a better understand of resident concerns, department head concerns, peer reviewer concerns, and so on, we could perhaps make a call. Okay, you know, on this pre-chosen date, this will be the date we talk about this one thing or these three things, whatever. But I really want the public to know in advance what's being discussed when we get at that point in the future, so that it's a transparent process, so that it's a thorough process, so that everybody who wants to be heard on an issue can be heard on an issue. So that would be my preference. I'm, of course, willing to discuss with the board, but I would love to leave this meeting with an understanding of what are the topical areas we will eventually want to discuss, what are we going to be asking department heads to weigh in on, what are we not requesting peer reviews on? I think that should be the question, not what are we requesting peer reviews on, so that we provide that resource to the city staff. And then at that later date, we can decide, okay, this date we've already figured out that this will be the day we discuss these things. So we let the public know way in advance. That would be my preference.
[Unidentified]: Okay. Thanks, Mike. Alicia.
[Alicia Hunt]: Madam Chair, thank you. So in terms of peer reviews, we have spoken with some of the staff in advance and there are a number of topics that we would actually appreciate having peer reviews in order to weigh in on. So if the board is so inclined to request them now, that would be beneficial to the staff so that they can then respond to both the proponents proposal and the peer review assessment of them. And those topics are architectural review, stormwater, which would also actually, this building, I think most people are aware is right next to a wetland, and so it will go to Conservation Commission, and the environmental agent informs me that the CONCOM would not mind getting a peer review for stormwater as well. They would have it in their purview to request it, but it that was available through this board that would just speed the process up. Traffic and parking. We spoke explicitly with Todd on that, and he would like to weigh in on the scope of that, but he would love to have a peer review of this because it's such a large project. It's such a busy road. It's such an interesting location. And I think that we would also benefit from a civil review, but I would actually leave that to the discretion of the building commissioner since he's here this evening, sounded like that topic was one that would be beneficial to him as well.
[Vasudevan]: You mean civil engineering?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes, civil engineering. I had not contemplated the idea that this could, in fact, go in front of the Community Development Board for their review, for their opinion. But if that is something that is allowable under this process, I don't think that board would object to and on it, they had not contemplated that.
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: So Felicia, it is not uncommon in other communities for other boards that would have input to the Board of Appeals. It's just that the applicant doesn't have to go to all those boards and go through a presentation and try to make people happy. But those boards certainly can review a project and make comments to the CBA. That's pretty common. I'm sorry.
[Unidentified]: No, no, that's okay. I was just gonna say, it sounds like we could, as a group, say we'd like to ask the Community Development Board if they'd like to weigh in.
[Alicia Hunt]: Sure.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Alicia Hunt]: But I appreciate that distinction because I also then assume that the applicant would have to present to them and they discuss the way we do in a site plan review. But it sounds like, actually, it would just be them reviewing the plans, in which case, having the peer reviews available to them might also be helpful.
[Unidentified]: HAB-Charlotte Pitts, she-her, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers, she- HAB-Charlotte Pitts, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her, she-her,
[Andre Leroux]: PB, Harmon Zuckerman.
[Unidentified]: I just don't want to cut the applicant out of a process if they would like to participate in it. Okay, yeah so community development and conservation.
[Mike Caldera]: Just a suggestion related to that last point. So I think there's a few ways we could accomplish this, but this is where we could potentially really leverage this whole notion of a work session. So work sessions, the whole ZBA would not be present. As I understand it, sometimes a single member might participate in the work session and report back. Generally, the proponent participates. So there could be a work session scheduled. on design, the community development board is there, the proponent is there, one of us is there, something along those lines. So I don't wanna, I'm not proposing this necessarily as like, this is the way it has to go, but I just wanna call out when I'm asking, I'd like to see work sessions on certain topics, that's what I mean. Like that would be one opportunity to have those discussions.
[Unidentified]: Okay, yeah. That makes sense to me. Okay, so we have, I just wanna be cognizant of a couple of things because it's nine o'clock. So we have a couple of things I think we need to make sure we accomplish tonight. And I need to double check, Judy, do we need to open public comment tonight?
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: That's up to the board. You can do that or you can inform the public that you're not taking comments tonight, but you will be at a subsequent meeting. That's entirely up to you.
[Unidentified]: Okay. Is it up to me as the chair?
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: Yes, you're running the meeting. It's your day.
[Unidentified]: Great. So my decision is going to be that we're not going to take public comment tonight. And the reason being is we've gotten a very high level review from the applicant, which from my perspective is to get us started and understand where we need to go for scheduling. We're going to have a lot of meetings coming up. And I do want to make sure the public understands that we will be taking public comment in the future. Judy, do I need to set a specific date? Or do I just need to let them know that we will be? Do I need to say we'll be taking public comment on such date?
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: No, you just need to reassure the public that there will be a point when the public will be asked for comments. And, you know, if you know that you're going to do that at the next meeting, it's probably a good idea to tell people tonight just because, you know, sure, sure.
[Unidentified]: My inclination is it'll probably be at the next scheduled meeting. we're not going to do it tonight. But I just want to reassure everyone we will absolutely be having public comment on this project so that's definite. We're not going to do it tonight what I want to make sure we do get through tonight is if there's any other information that any of the board members think would be helpful or that's missing or that we need from the applicant I want to make sure that we are . I am not sure the applicant has to do any work behind it. It would be more city staff. But the question of whether we want to investigate the option for the 20% at a 50% versus the 25-80%.
[Andre Leroux]: Actually, on a related question to that, I'm wondering whether, you know, the city has any, you know, we have a CPA, Community Preservation Committee. There is money for affordable housing. I'm wondering whether there's been any conversation about, you know, expanding affordability, if there was municipal CPA funds that would, you know, go into the project. I don't know, Judy, what's your experience on that?
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: Some other towns have done that. You're never really in a position to sort of buy down all of the 80% units, but you may be able to buy down some. I mean, it's a discussion worth having. Absolutely, I think that's a good idea. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.
[Unidentified]: I'm sorry, no, I think that's a great idea. CPA funds usage for housing is a great use of that fund.
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it is. And I don't blame you for bringing this so this is coming up in every town I work in that the rents are just higher than what people actually need housing can afford. So if there's any discussion with the applicant about, you know, the city perhaps being a player in trying to bring some of those rents down, I would encourage you to do that they don't have to do it but, you know, The applicant wants an approval, too. So I think you've got to work together on this.
[Unidentified]: Sure. To the applicant, the question I'm going to ask you is two part. A, is that something that you want to speak to now, or perhaps something to reserve for the future? And if it's now, what are your thoughts? But if you want to reserve that for the future, go right ahead.
[MCM00001600_SPEAKER_05]: Well, I can give a quick answer. Chris, jump in if you'd like as well. Not something we're prepared to speak to now, but certainly open to the conversation and the potential. It's something that, quite frankly, has come up in prior discussions with the city as we were getting to this point, so.
[Unidentified]: Okay, so let's just, we'll just mark that for future discussion. Okay, so I just want to circle back other board members. Jamie, Yvette, I don't know that you specifically, were there any other questions you wanted? I mean, of course, Andre and Mike as well, Jim. Any other questions for the applicant, anybody?
[Yvette Velez]: I don't have specific questions. I just want to confirm that what everybody has said and what I'm hearing is essentially what I'm thinking as well, which is when we talked about peer review for stormwater, that would go under environmental, right? So that would be like one meeting. It's not stormwater peer review. Meeting and environmental and so all these topics break down to about 4 peer reviews. Am I correct? Like traffic. The design, the environment.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, I, I was thinking, or I'm getting like architectural design review is one stormwater conservation is another environmentally. But I think specific to stormwater there would be the point of view, traffic and parking, and then Alicia suggested the. Oh no, we had that from Judy's all the civil engineering review. So I think I have those four. And then within each of those as Michael was talking about we want to make sure we're addressing some of those community needs, the health and safety and all of that. Thinking is we probably probably six meetings. Does that seem like enough? Our next meeting can be the general meeting where we look at feedback we've gotten from the city. Then we can have those four meetings and then that and then a six meeting because I'm sure you always need one more meeting than you think you need or a final Judy.
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I agree. And I think also the thing that's going to be important to me to remind the board about is that you really want, while the hearing is open, to have a discussion about the applicants' requested waivers. You don't have to vote on them, but you need to have a discussion to make sure the board understands why the waivers are needed and what the implications are of not granting them, so to speak. Because you're going to have to vote at some point when the hearing is closed. And that way you can't take any more information from the applicant. So having a discussion about the waivers, perhaps having a discussion generally about what kinds of conditions of approval the board might be considering if they're going to vote to approve the project, that may be a sort of a final meeting before you close the hearing would probably be a good idea.
[Unidentified]: Sure. So maybe we do our next meetings, a general meeting, and then we give ourselves five meetings that can comprise those four subject areas, and then a discussion of waivers and conditions, a sixth catch-all, just in case we need something meeting, then we close, and then I think it's like, what, 40 days we have to vote?
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: We have 40 days to reach a decision and file it with the town clerk. Yeah, okay.
[Unidentified]: All right, folks, what do you think? Oh, I've got some hands, Andre.
[Andre Leroux]: Thank you. So I like the idea of putting those meetings in the calendar. I like the idea of the first meeting being focused kind of generally, but I also take that to be like design. Design should really be the first thing that we tee up because again, if there's any significant changes to design, all the other things change. The other thing I would just say is that I honestly don't think we need so many meetings to take care of all of the other pieces. So I don't necessarily know that I want to lock in all of those themes to those meetings right away. I know I appreciate Mike's point that it'd be good for the public to know when things are coming up. But again, my experience is that once you have the design, once there's agreement that this is the best possible design for the project, then a lot of the other stuff falls into place, right? Number of electric vehicle charging stations or how, you know, any mitigation on the intersection, like that stuff is all smaller. So I do like Mike's suggestion of maybe having in between, like maybe after the next meeting where we get all this kind of information and feedback, Maybe if there's a lot of questions about the design and could it be better, then maybe we put together like a working session with the proponent and city staff and maybe the board representatives and see whether we can try to kind of nail that down before the following meeting. That would be my suggestion.
[Unidentified]: OK, yeah, that's interesting. Mike, did you want to add to that or something different?
[Mike Caldera]: Yeah, well, so I raised my hand for a different reason, but I'm close to full agreement with Andre on this. So first, just to speak to that, my suggestion is, so I would like to decide the topics we care about today, but not the theme of the future meetings today. And I think it would be prudent to identify dates that work. with enough meetings such that we could cover the topics we care about. And then perhaps at this second meeting, if it's going to be sort of the catch all where we have all the department letters and peer reviews requested and so on, we can cancel. We can always cancel a meeting we don't need. For me, I think the important thing is there's enough notice in advance for the public about what the topic will be rather than deciding today what the topic will be. So I just like there to be enough meetings pre-coordinated and scheduled, and we can always walk it back. We might not need all of them. And same would apply to working sessions. So based on this discussion, I'm certainly willing to walk back my initial claim that we need a working session on every topic. But I think it is not a far leap to think that there should be a predetermined design working session date. And then again, we can cancel it if we don't need it. I'm not sure I fully buy into the idea that design is like You know, I don't want to misstate what Andre said, design super important everybody agrees about that, you know, whether it's like this overarching thing or there's other things that that sort of like relate, you know, we could just agree to disagree there, but, but yeah like I think there's some that we could certainly anticipate in advance. There's going to be a lot of questions, there's going to be a lot of feedback. Certainly, I think, in this second meeting we could also visit the logical order in which to do the subtopics and I do buy into the proposition that design probably comes first. But yeah, I would prefer to identify more dates than we actually need today to align on the topics today that we think we might need to discuss. And then, again, if we determine at that second meeting, hey, you know what? There's not a lot of concerns, not a lot of feedback about this. We just don't hold that. We formally cancel it at that point. And lastly, the reason why I had raised my hand initially is I just wanted to check in. The four areas identified cover almost everything. If not everything, the one that I'm a little shaky on is whether it gets us to that planning element. So I think design, there's pieces of planning that you touch on there, but planning would also encompass things like how the proposal kind of fits with the comprehensive plan and some of the local need for affordable housing and things of that nature. So I'd like that covered somehow. Maybe it needs its own session, but I just wanted to be communicative up front. I think the four we have in mind will certainly cover the other areas and planning is the one I'm a little uncertain about.
[Unidentified]: Sure. So if we're going to do seven more meetings, I think that might be something where if we find that it needs its own meeting, that extra meeting that we've scheduled might be the place for it. And I think I agree with the consensus we're heading towards. I'm envisioning it like this. We schedule our next, or we pick our meeting dates so that we have those stakes in the ground. PB, Lisa Smith-Miyazaki, she, her, hers, we can announce that this is another general meeting. At that meeting, we'll have hopefully review responses from the boards and the departments within the city. We, at that point, are going to have a little bit of a better sense of what questions we have. I'm a little wary of scheduling the working sessions now. because I'm thinking that we are going to get a sense of what kind of questions we might get from the community, what kind of questions we might have. And then there may be one of us who seems like the right person to go to that working session and that scheduling. So I'm thinking we may do If we have like the architectural meeting is the after a general meeting, if that's the first meeting, it may be that like, you know, Andre or whomever it says, OK, I had the most questions. Maybe you're the right person for the working session. Let's schedule it. That would be kind of my inclination in that respect. But I definitely would like to get those like six or seven meetings scheduled. Mike, what are you thinking?
[Mike Caldera]: Yeah. So just one suggestion that I think might reconcile all of this. So I certainly see the case for not pre-scheduling working sessions, but perhaps we could request from each of the departments that, or whomever from the city is speaking to each of these four core areas, architecture, stormwater, traffic and parking, and civil review. we should request that they also, if they're gonna attend the next meeting, great, we can just ask them in the meeting, or that they provide us with some dates that would work for them for a working session. So I'd like to basically, in our second meeting, have feedback about potential dates if we need them. I wanna avoid a scenario where we're like, We get there and it's okay. Okay. Based on the feedback, we definitely need a design working session and the logical participants in that working session. We don't know their availability. So maybe sort of pre request some dates from them just so that when we get to that point, if we decide we need a working session, we already have Um, some dates that we could kind of, um, work with me. I mean, maybe we can take this scheduling offline. I guess we don't necessarily in a public meeting have to pick the dates. We just have to agree that there's a working session. So that would be right.
[Unidentified]: Yeah. I I'm wary of doing any of that before our next meeting. Yeah, I think that's a good point. I don't think we have enough substantive content yet from the city, but I think that I like that. What you're trying to say basically is you don't want us to be caught. At the end without enough time for things. And I really do agree with that. And yeah, maybe some of the scheduling stuff, I think you're right. Can be done offline. But I think before the next meeting, Yes. OK. All right. So let's let's do this, Dennis. I think that we received technically we received the application on the thirty first of October. Is that correct?
[Denis MacDougall]: That is correct, yes. OK, kind of jump forward one hundred and eighty days from that is April twenty ninth.
[Unidentified]: Oh boy. OK, so April twenty ninth. We have to close the one hundred and eighty day hearing. by that point in time. So between now and April 29th, we need to schedule seven meetings. And we've got some holidays coming up. So, let's see. December, January, February, March, April. So that's five months.
[Denis MacDougall]: If I can just jump in, I'm wondering if- Yeah, go ahead. sort of discussed about it, but I wonder if maybe just do two or three meetings because, I mean, four months ahead is tricky, especially given that we have, you know, we want to make sure that the board members will be available for those meetings. And that if we sort of, I know we sort of said we can sort of move around later, but if we just say, you know, our next three meetings tonight and sort of schedule, put those in and we can, you know.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, you know, I'm not, I'm not opposed to that. I think, What's helpful is right now we have a sense that we think that we'd like seven. So we can just work backwards if we know that we have five months to get in seven meetings, we can't schedule our first meeting six weeks from now. or our next meeting six weeks from now. So we need to schedule our next meeting like three weeks from now. So that's all right.
[Mike Caldera]: Actually, I'm not convinced it'll work that way because first of all, respectfully, I'm less in agreement that we can, that we should schedule. I'd like to schedule all of them again. We can cancel them. We've got everybody here. We could, we could identify.
[Vasudevan]: I think we could probably also move them.
[Mike Caldera]: Yeah, we can move them too. Yes.
[Vasudevan]: But so the,
[Mike Caldera]: I'm, it's my understanding that by the second meeting, we need all the department heads to weigh in. And we haven't had a motion about it, but I'm anticipating that perhaps some peer reviews will be requested and we need the peer reviews.
[Unidentified]: So, I don't, I don't think we can get the peer reviews before our next meeting.
[Mike Caldera]: Don't I think don't isn't that depend on when we schedule it. Right. So I was under the impression that because you need the peer reviews and you need the department heads to weigh in, there's a gap between meeting one and meeting two. So all the ducks get in a row and then you have to do a compressed schedule. So maybe we're doing two meetings a month or anything like that. I don't think we have the ability to just like, like. load balance it across the whole window because we need the department comment, because we need the peer review. So we lose some lead time to that.
[Unidentified]: Okay. So my understanding, and I'm going to ask Judy on this, but my understanding was that what we're trying to do before the next meeting was get the department feedback. And that, that we, I mean, we can say that we think we'd like peer reviews on all four of those subjects tonight. I think it sounds like we have the ability to do that if we want to do that, but I don't, I think it might take a while to get some of these peer reviews.
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: Well, it will. And I just want to jump in on this. The consultants who have anything to do with real estate are swamped. I see this in every town I'm working in. People make a good faith effort to try to meet a deadline and they've got too many projects and they just, it's on the applicant side as well as the peer review consultant side. So my suggestion is you might wanna go ahead and authorize the staff, however the process is done in Medford too, to secure a consultant for transportation a consultant for site civil stormwater, at least get those things going. You know, often in the towns I work in, I suggest a design consultant, but it sounds like your community development board kind of does that. So I don't want to interfere with a talent that you may already have in house. But my experience is those are the three key issues that you need to get some help from outside. And I would also say this, if for some reason the project ended up in litigation, I don't think you want your city staff to be the ones defending the board's technical analysis. I think you want outside consultants. So I think you can get those procurements going and you can and they can get started. They could just get started with you. There's no reason why they can't. And the departmental staff can work with them. But you may not have reports from them by your next meeting.
[Vasudevan]: Do you have a sense of how long typically they take? to get back, or does it vary?
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: Well, there are consultants who do this work, and they can get on it. But the holidays are coming. I mean, there's just a lot of factors kind of weighing against this. I think what you want to do is get them lined up, at least get them the application plans and materials so they can get started. But I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you're going to have peer review reports by the next meeting. What you probably want is for them to be at the next meeting. So they can hear the departmental comments and hear whatever other feedback is coming up. And that will help them perhaps orient their review or be conscious that there are certain things they should be looking at.
[Unidentified]: So maybe what we want to make sure we do, I think what I'm hearing from the other board members is that we are leaning towards getting those four areas, getting peer review for those four areas to assist our departments. Um, and then so maybe what we want to do after we get some scheduling done is have a vote about the peer review. And then we can, whatever the process is for getting those people hired we can request they come to our next meeting, perhaps. And then also, I want to get to Bill in a second, but also Alicia, I want to ask you about what we do in terms of getting the feedback from the department heads. Are we waiting for feedback from them in writing? Are they going to be able to attend or send representatives to attend our next meeting? Do you know?
[Alicia Hunt]: So we had been assuming that we would get the peer reviews and department heads would comment on that.
[Unidentified]: Sorry, I'm sorry, Alicia, I can't hear you. Yeah. A little better.
[Alicia Hunt]: I may have to wake up. I mean, you can hear me with this one, right? This is better. Thanks. Sorry. So we were hoping to have department heads weigh in, like review the peer review reports, but it's sounding like we're not gonna have time to do that. Like we wanted them to weigh in on the scope, but my thought was that this, my assumptions, and Judy or someone else can go. wrong, that this board tonight would authorize the city, and I would just state it as the city to hire peer review consultants, don't give this flexibility in these areas for this project. then we would consult, my office would consult with the various department heads, make sure we're all comfortable with the scope and we'd get them hired and going. When we got the reports back, we would then comment on that and provide that to this board. So my assumption had been that this board wouldn't actually meet again for 60 days, unless you just wanted to hear from the public about general public concerns. Okay, that's not going to work. We can ask department heads, what we would normally do for a project that goes to site plan review is we would take the filing that you have now, we would circulate it to walk to the department heads the standard list. and ask them to address comments to you but send them to our office and then compile those and then send them to you all and we would request that you guys let us know which of those department heads you would want to have come in front of you or come meet with you to go over their comments. It's very OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg
[Unidentified]: It sounds like from what you're saying it actually would be more helpful for the department heads to have that peer review information first. i'm i'm i'm fine with with that bill, did you have something on this.
[Bill Forte]: Yes, so i'm going back to my original question for the petitioner is. I'm kind of trying to get a sense of how close we are to having some detailed construction, not construction plans, but the basics of what's needed to make an informed determination on whether or not the project complies or if it needs help. And I'm just curious if they could answer that as to how quickly they might be able to get us some technical drawings at least.
[B3oaa8YVtBA_SPEAKER_16]: HAB-Jacques Juilland, Moderator): Building permit level drawings because it's it's typical in a 40 D project to bring forward more schematic drawings. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Moderator): yeah that's what we've done here. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Moderator): gets refined as the process goes on, but we're not we're not doing a full construction level plan set at this point we've heard some comments about architectural and design comments that it would really be. Improper I think to advance plans, the construction level, if we're going to be getting comments about much more.
[Bill Forte]: That's what I'm referring to. Yeah, so so basically what we're looking for just to just a basic. building code design or code analysis. Along with a detailed site plan showing traffic circulation and zoning heights, how you derive not only to the definition under the state building code of average grade plain, but also how that is, how you derive at the, at those proposed zoning height. So let's just say that your average grade plane is you know 84 feet 10 inches you know one of the state building code. But it it's you're seeking a variance for you know for over the height limit of whatever might be we need to know what that what that height level is according to the zoning ordinance. as well as the this you know the state building code under the definition so I just need some basic information and I think it might just be a little bit better if I can put into a memo to the to the chair. The details that I'll be looking for on the plan just some of the basics and and again I just wanted a general idea as to how far away you are from providing at least more technical details of what I saw in the original package.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, I think that sounds good, Bill, with the memo, that would be great. Okay. Perfect. Okay, so after that feedback, I'm thinking maybe, I think what Mike and Alicia said makes a lot of sense to me, that maybe we look for something end of January and hope that that can give us time if we're gonna, it sounds like we might be in agreement on what the peer reviews would, topics would be we want to authorize the city to get the consultants for. Does that make sense?
[Mike Caldera]: Jack, just one suggestion and perhaps through you, this is a question to Alicia. So I see potential value. So we're not just hinging all our hopes on the peer review consultant and having the relevant department heads at least draft, but perhaps not share their thoughts so that they can actually work with the peer review consultant. The peer review consultant can review and speak to some of the department heads comments, just to sort of streamline this whole process. So I do still think we need some lead time, but I'm wondering if there's an opportunity for some degree of parallelization, at least in the drafting process, just so that it's not this like thing where just everything hinges on the peer review feedback and otherwise where we're like starting from square zero. So just wanted to throw that out there. Chair, sorry.
[B3oaa8YVtBA_SPEAKER_16]: I'm not totally following.
[Unidentified]: Oh, sorry. Sorry, Mr. Advocate, one second. I think that was addressed to Alicia. Correct. Yeah, Alicia, go ahead. Alicia, we can't hear you. Nothing. Oh, something. It's not great, but it's better than nothing.
[Alicia Hunt]: Is this better? Much. Is there a weird echo?
[Vasudevan]: Yeah, still better.
[Alicia Hunt]: Okay, sorry, I'm not sure what's going on with the sound. No, it's fine. So there are some department heads that we get peer review, we get, sorry. Let's see if this works better because the echo was distracting me so badly that I couldn't think. Um, can you hear me now? Yep. Okay. Um, so there are some departments heads that will make comments that don't have anything to do with the peer reviews. Um, the Board of Health, the fire. We can absolutely ask them to do that. The standard time is that when we get a filing in, we give the staff 35 days to respond. 35 calendar days. Um, seven weeks. Um, I have to apologize. It's actually Amanda in my office that does all the calculations, sends them out to all the department heads and tells them what their deadlines are, but I believe it's 35 calendar days.
[Unidentified]: Oh, calendar days. I thought you said business. Okay.
[Alicia Hunt]: No, 35 calendar days from when she gets it for them to send in comments. So we could certainly send it to them and ask them to provide comments and include the ones who will comment on stormwater and traffic and basically just say what level of comments you feel comfortable providing now, how much do you need to wait for those reviews to come in, so that you can get all the standard comments back more quickly. really the group that does design review is the planning board as opposed to the office. So we could ask the planning board to weigh in on it. I would definitely like to see a design review from a third party. I think that would be better. than just relying on the planning board because we don't usually see buildings of this size. So we don't actually weigh in on these kinds of buildings that often. So that would be my thought. We're happy. There's no reason why we couldn't circulate the materials that we have in hand by the end of this week. Probably tomorrow, but I would rely on Amanda and I don't know what her schedule looks like for tomorrow.
[Unidentified]: Okay. Yeah, I think that's helpful. I think that makes a lot of sense. It sounds like what makes sense is about 60 days to our next meeting. Something to that effect.
[B3oaa8YVtBA_SPEAKER_16]: If I could just jump in.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, go ahead.
[B3oaa8YVtBA_SPEAKER_16]: 60 days.
[Unidentified]: We're taking all the suggestions.
[B3oaa8YVtBA_SPEAKER_16]: 60 days to the next hearing. where we need to wrap this up by August 29th is not a lot of time. April 29th. What did I say?
[Yvette Velez]: August.
[B3oaa8YVtBA_SPEAKER_16]: Oh, goodness. Tim's kicking me under the table right now. As he should. I've certainly done 40 B's that have not peer reviewed everything. And we get into the conversation with municipal staff and with board members. We've heard, I think, a desire to open the hearing for public comment as well. So if there's a way, the application was, I think, submitted at the end of October, if there's a way to start getting some staff comments and hold the next hearing in December or early January, if the board's inclined to involve some peer reviews, that can happen on a parallel track. to wait until the end of January, because tonight you'll need to vote to continue this hearing to a date, place, and time certain. If you don't do that until the end of January, we're blocked. You're blocked without re-noticing.
[Unidentified]: I see.
[B3oaa8YVtBA_SPEAKER_16]: Yeah. I think what you may want to consider is continuing the hearing to a date, time, and place certain later in December. for staff comment, those that can be received, or some public comment, or even the beginning of January. Because if you wait until the end of January, who knows if peer reviewers are going to be able to get hired up and turn around, comment that quickly. And then for those reports to come in, and then staff read those, and then give comments, this is not a lot of runway. So I think I would encourage the board to think about an earlier hearing date, you can always, at a hearing, continue it to another date, time, and place. But if you don't do it until the end of January, nothing's happening in the intervening time.
[Unidentified]: Yeah. And actually, you know what? That's very helpful. Thank you. As you said that, I'm thinking that maybe that's the good time to say we're going to open for public comment. We've got a lot of things working, and we know we want to make sure we give the public an opportunity to speak on it. Maybe that's a good time to do that. Um, okay. I do.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, just, I was really, I mean, my original suggestion was to do early January because of the holidays and because it would give the department heads time to do that. And maybe we could get, you know, uh, in touch with some, some, some peer reviewers, uh, you know, over the next month. I don't know. I'm also would be open to doing some of this at our next regularly scheduled meeting in December, but I don't know if that conflicts with the holidays and if we were going to change that anyways. But I do think by early January makes sense.
[Vasudevan]: Yeah.
[Denis MacDougall]: Can I jump in?
[Unidentified]: Yep. Go ahead, Dennis.
[Denis MacDougall]: So our normally scheduled meeting would be December 29th. That's when Christmas and New Year's. So usually in those cases, we always push that December meeting to the following week in January, which we did. Which is January 5th. Which kind of falls under what we were sort of talking about. So we can, we only, right now we only have two items on the agenda for that night. So we could have that, we could put these things in addition to our regularly scheduled meetings.
[Unidentified]: On January 5th. Yeah, I'm amenable to that, particularly if we don't know how much content we're going to have back. And what we want to make sure we're doing is taking a look at whatever feedback we have gotten from department heads, giving public time for feedback. And I'm thinking, if we know that there are four areas that we want to ask for peer review, If anything else comes up that we do want peer reviewed. Probably want to know that sooner rather than later so that would be a good time. If there's anything else you want to vote for.
[Mike Caldera]: Um, okay. Major.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
[Mike Caldera]: So, I'm in favor of keeping these hearings separate from the regular meetings I think it's kind of. other applicants may just, I know we can take the business up front, but it just creates a risky situation if we're coupling such a big project with these other hearings. And I also, I may have misheard, but it sounds like if the board were to set the expectation with the city tonight that we would like to Um review uh department head comments uh by our next meeting with or without um the peer reviews ready and that it would be customary to give 35 days you know I think being mindful of the holidays and that people might want to take time perhaps we put a little bit of buffer on that so you know somewhere in the second week in Jan, like Jan 12th, would be in the range that's customary for city department heads to provide comments if we were to make it clear today that that is a request of them. And then furthermore, I mean, we will address it later with a formal motion, but I'm certainly in favor of requesting the four peer reviews today. You know, if we have those ready in time, great. If not, at least set that process in motion.
[Unidentified]: Sure. Okay, and I just have a question, because I know that Dennis and Alicia and Victor also have to sit in on other meetings on other days of the week. Before we get into the specifics, is there a particular day of the week for you folks, and also for Bill, I guess, too, that is, like, should we try to do Thursdays? Should we try to do, like, what is the thought process there?
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: If it's any help, Madam Chair, I cannot do a Thursday night, just telling you. Oh, any Thursdays? I have many ZBAs, and they all say to leave Thursday night. OK. Sorry, just speaking of that.
[Unidentified]: No, no, no, that's OK. Alicia, what were you going to say?
[Alicia Hunt]: So, well, I was gonna say that Thursday nights are good for us, but just, I would say not Tuesday nights because of our very frequent need to go to city council plus traffic commission. That makes Mondays and Wednesdays generally better. We don't have things scheduled other than, well, that's New Year's Day.
[Unidentified]: Technically, I think the ordinance says this board meets on Mondays, the last Monday of the month. And then at some point it got switched to Thursdays. I don't know why. Somebody told me once and I forgot why.
[Alicia Hunt]: They're meeting earlier in the evening. 730 is extremely late for staff. So I don't actually know why this board meets so late.
[Unidentified]: It was 730 on Thursdays when I started.
[Yvette Velez]: It was a selfish reason. A few of us have children and we chose as a group that a later date worked for us.
[Alicia Hunt]: So Mondays generally work. Every other Wednesday is bad for Dennis because of the conservation commission. That's the first and third. And actually the community development board is looking at meeting the first and third Wednesdays, which is, I have to be at those.
[Unidentified]: Okay, why don't we, it sounds like Monday might be a good day then. Does that work for Andre, Jamie, Mike, Jim, Yvette? Yeah. Okay. So let's look at some Mondays. How about we're not going to do January 2nd for sure. January 9th for our next meeting.
[Mike Caldera]: Just want to double check. So Alicia, do you think given the customary amount of time we give factoring in the holidays, we have the relevant department heads comments by the ninth?
[Alicia Hunt]: I think that that's fair. The only ones that I would wonder about, if they'd be complete, would be comments on stormwater and traffic. I apologize off the top of my head. Did the proponents submit a traffic study? I assume you did.
[B3oaa8YVtBA_SPEAKER_16]: We did, yes.
[Vasudevan]: Yeah, they did.
[Unidentified]: Well, and that's also one, though it sounds like the board is planning to have peer review for that anyway.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, so I think the rest of the department heads how fire, it would be pretty reasonable to request. I don't know if we could get the planning board comments by then. And actually usually the planning board, sorry, community development board reacts to department head comments. So they would be usually the last to weigh in.
[Unidentified]: Okay. Well, it sounds like it might be that these things are going to come to us in stages anyway. But if you feel that that's a reasonable amount of time for us to get going on it, let's say January 9th will be our next meeting. Okay. So then that gives us three and a half-ish months to plan HAB-Charlotte Pitts, Moderator, she or her): Like six more meetings.
[Andre Leroux]: So January 9 HAB-Danny Teodoru, he or he, he or he, we take the rest of the scheduling offline because I don't think it's a great use of our time here. HAB-Danny Teodoru, he or he, he or he, we need, we need to obviously have the date certain for the next one, which we have now we do January 9 but I think we should you know, all of us just weigh in on the schedule for the next few. And, um, that doesn't have to happen during the meeting. I don't think. Right.
[Unidentified]: Um, no, you know what, it doesn't, I think, um, I'd like to just put some dates in the, in the ground right now, if everybody's okay with Monday nights, just because I am wary about us getting going. Um, Let me just say these nights and then just let me know for board members if we think that this works. If we did January 9th and then we went three, I'm thinking, are we gonna have enough if we do every three weeks or are we gonna need to do two? So then it would be, hang on, let me just see. One, just a sec. Okay, so one, two, three, I don't mind. It might not be enough if we do every three weeks. No, it's not. We have to do every two weeks. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's say January. Okay. January 9th, January 23, February 6, February 20, March 6, March 20, April 3, One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, that's seven. And then if we need to cancel some weekend, does that work? I'll say them again. January 9th, January 23rd, February 6th, February 20th, March 6th, March 20th, April 3rd.
[Yvette Velez]: So what are those dates lands on a February vacation week for those that have children?
[Unidentified]: What week is that?
[Yvette Velez]: It usually doesn't work well for out of town.
[Vasudevan]: The 20th or the 6th, probably.
[Yvette Velez]: And then just for my own personal, for work, I'm out of town.
[Unidentified]: One second, Yvette, what week is school vacation?
[Yvette Velez]: Vacation week is the 20th.
[Unidentified]: So that's President's Day. So let's make that the 27th. And then that means instead of March 6th, it's March 13th. Instead of the 20th, it's the 27th instead of April 3rd, it's April 10th. Okay.
[Mike Caldera]: April 10th is the day after Easter.
[Unidentified]: Um, April 17th, then that's my birthday. Okay. Uh, how about these January nine, January 23, February six, February 27, March 13, March 27, April 17. We're going to hang out a ton and everybody's going to love it. How do we feel about these dates?
[Yvette Velez]: The university, for us, we schedule MLK events the week of the 23rd. So I'm out the 23rd. Of? January. OK.
[Unidentified]: Question for Judy, does every member have to be at every meeting or can we do the thing we normally do where if you read the filings in the minutes, you can certify that you're up to date?
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: If you miss one meeting.
[Unidentified]: Okay, you can miss one meeting.
[MCM00000619_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the city has adopted the Mullen rule, you have done that before, where someone has listened to the hearing or read that, yeah, okay. Assuming the city has actually adopted the Mullen rule, yes, a member can miss one meeting. Okay. Um, are you three or five voting? Are you, how many people, what's the size of the five now?
[Unidentified]: Okay. All right. We're five with one alternate. Okay. Um, but we need four to vote. I mean, we don't want to have anybody not having to vote, but we have, uh, two, we have a little bit of extra space. Um, okay. Sorry that you said you can't do January 23. Correct. Um, And then what were the March dates again? March six, March 13 and 27. Um, all right. January 23. Do you think that we should reschedule that? Or do you think that that can just be the one?
[Mike Caldera]: I personally would like every member to believe now that they could meet every meeting because life happens.
[Unidentified]: So yeah, good point. Okay.
[Mike Caldera]: One becomes ineligible because of life.
[Unidentified]: Yep. Well, sorry for everybody watching that. This is really boring, but we're going to do this now. Okay. So. So I'm free the whole week, except for that Monday, January is Wednesday, the 25th. One of those days that you have to do that thing, Dennis.
[Andre Leroux]: That's just a question. The MLK day is the week before on the 16th.
[Yvette Velez]: Correct, but I work at an institution and so we celebrate for like the weeks ahead.
[Unidentified]: I don't know what that means.
[Yvette Velez]: So, um, we have a MLK week, um, you know, where, uh, unity and service. I work in community engagement and so our big event will be that night. Okay, got it.
[Unidentified]: Um, yeah, also if that's a holiday, I don't want to have staff have to.
[Yvette Velez]: That's not the holiday. The holiday lands the week before, but because I work at the school. Got it. Following it through the following week.
[Unidentified]: Okay, so my question to Dennis is Wednesday, January 25th, is that a night that you're free? Yes, I'm free, Dennis. Yeah, we should be good. Can you hear me? I can hear you. January 23rd is January 25th now. Okay, I'm gonna read these again. Speak now or forever hold your peace. January 9th, January 25th, February 6th, February 27th, March 3rd, March 27th, April 17th. Okay. Those are going to be our meeting dates. We've got seven of them. So I think we can figure out topics coming up. We're going to do hopefully as much department head feedback as possible by January 9. And I think that we should take a vote. to authorize the city to hire peer review consultants in the areas of architectural review, stormwater, drainage, traffic and parking, and civil engineering. So moved. Anything? Oh, so moved. Okay. Do I have a second? Jim? Okay. So let's do, I'm going to do roll call. Yvette. Yay. Jamie? Yeah. Andre? Sorry, Andre, I didn't hear you. Yes. Okay. Jim? Jim? Where's Jim? Okay. And Mike? Yes. Oh, shoot. Sorry, not Jamie. Sorry, Jamie. And then Jacqueline, I'm yes. Okay, so that's five out of five, we've authorized the city to hire peer review consultants in those four areas. Is there anything else we need to touch on tonight? Judy, Alicia? Jack, can you hear me? I can.
[Denis MacDougall]: Okay. Can you just go over the dates again? Sorry, we couldn't.
[Unidentified]: No, no, no. No, I'm gonna give them to you again. January 9th, Monday. Yep. January 25th, switched it up, Wednesday. February 6th, Monday, and all the following are Monday. February 27th, March 13th, March 27th and my birthday, April 17th. So we're gonna just have a great fun time.
[Denis MacDougall]: What was that? Awesome. Great. So April 20, oh no, you know what? So if we have 27, oh no, Easter Monday.
[Vasudevan]: Um, Dennis, can you do Wednesday, April 12?
[Denis MacDougall]: Yes, that's that's fine. That works for me.
[Unidentified]: Okay, you all don't get to hang out with me on the birthday. Okay, January 9, January 25, February 6, February 27, March 13, March 27, and April 12. Everybody's having so much fun, I can tell. Okay, so those are our dates. We've authorized the city. Is there anything else that we need to do tonight before we motion to continue to January 9th at 730? Just a quick question, Jacqueline. Yes. I believe earlier that Alicia had asked about a peer review for design. I just want to make sure that Oh yeah, that was the architectural. Yep, that was the architectural design one. Yep. So yeah, so it's, I'll just say them again for everyone listening. It's architectural design review. I may not have said design correctly. Stormwater, traffic and parking, civil engineering. Those are the four we've authorized. If we think of any others, maybe we'll just do more things. We don't know. Okay. Last time I'm going to ask, anything else we need to do tonight before we motion to continue? from the applicant. Anything else that you'd like to add? Nope, I think we're good. Thank you. Perfect. Can I please get a motion to continue this hearing to January 9th, 2023 at 7.30 PM?
[Mike Caldera]: I motion to continue the hearing for 4000 Mystic Valley Parkway. to January 9th, 2023 at 7.30 p.m.
[Unidentified]: Andre, did you say second? Yes, seconded. Okay. Yvette? How do you vote? To continue? Yes. Okay. Andre? Yes. Jim? Yes. Mike? Yes. And Jacqueline is yes. Okay, so we are continued to January 9th. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and end of the year.
[B3oaa8YVtBA_SPEAKER_16]: Madam Chair, before we break, will that be a virtual hearing again or will that be an in-person hearing? And should we plan to be at City Hall?
[Unidentified]: Great question. I have no idea. Dennis and Alicia. I have to join remotely. Sure. I think my understanding is it will either be remote or hybrid. Um, but I think that might have to be information that we get to you because I think people are still figuring out the hybrid situation and I do not know, but we could definitely try to let you know very quickly. I think Alicia, I cannot hear you. I still cannot hear you. No. Nope.
[Alicia Hunt]: We can do hybrid if you want to do hybrid. Tonight, we didn't recommend it because of what else is going on in the chamber this evening. but if we have the council chamber, it's doable. It's a lot more work for staff, including the city's TV staff. We have a third person here with us in the control room. Okay.
[Andre Leroux]: On that front- Personally, I'd appreciate, I mean, remote is just so much easier and I feel like the public can even participate better and see the materials better.
[Unidentified]: Okay. I mean, I'm fine with remote. Why don't we say this? We're going to plan on remote. If there's something else that comes up, we will communicate that as swiftly as possible.
[Vasudevan]: Cool. Okay. Thanks folks. We will see you in January.
[Mike Caldera]: We need to do that.
[Unidentified]: Sure. Why not? Second. Okay. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Me too. Thanks, Phil. All right. Happy holidays, everybody. Have a great night, everyone. Oh, no. I'm going to see everybody two nights from now. So see you later. See you later. Bye, team. All right.